Melinda

Melinda is a collaborative environment for national cataloguing activities as well as a national metadata repository that is used to collate descriptive meta

Service description

Melinda is a collaborative environment for national cataloguing activities as well as a national metadata repository that is used to collate descriptive metadata on library materials. Participating libraries can use the shared repository to catalogue their materials and thus enable this information to be further utilised. This process helps the libraries decrease their workload and save costs, allowing them to focus on providing their patrons with even better services.

As a rule, Melinda contains all of the materials of its participating libraries. The theses, dissertations and electronic material packages included in Melinda have been catalogued by the libraries based on their individual policies and licensing terms.

The National Library of Finland continues to develop Melinda’s operating model in collaboration with the participating libraries to better meet their current and future needs. 

Background information

Melinda is the direct descendant of LINDA, the union catalogue for university and joint libraries as well as certain special libraries. In addition to the libraries’ reference data, Melinda also contains the Finnish National Bibliography (Fennica). The National Metadata Repository Initiative helped Finnish university of applied sciences libraries to join Melinda in 2012–2014, and the first public libraries in 2015. Melinda is set to gradually become a shared metadata repository for all Finnish libraries. The ultimate goal of the service is to have each work or material be catalogued in the metadata repository only once, thus reducing the incidence of overlapping work.

Joining the service

Joining the service requires a contract

Part of a service package